I Could Never Let Go If I Tried

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There are several movies that I'm looking forward to in the remainder of the year - Black Swan and Piranha 3D are two that pop right to mind! There's a double feature for ya - but none more than Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro heart-rending novel. I've been going on about this project for almost two years now (first post) and that its release is now only a month and a half away - it's out in limited release on September 15th - seems surreal. I've seen the trailer several times now and it overwhelms me each time. My hopes for this one are in the stratosphere and I'm walking a very thin line of being esctatic with every new thing I see and terrified that it will all go wrong in the end. I haven't had a single reason to think it will go wrong yet, but this has been a brutal year for cinematic disappointment and just general underachievery. Fingers, toes, nethers crossed all goes good.

Anyway! That poster up top is new to my eyes, and via here are a pair of new pictures - one is a behind-the-scenes shot with Romanek directing his cast, and the other's of two very lovely people in character.

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Bring On The Blasphemy

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Last week I mentioned the Ken Russell festival starting up here in New York at Lincoln Center - well it's upon us and tonight I will finally be seeing 1971's The Devils, which has eluded me like a band of randy nuns in heat for years. No I don't much get how that sentence makes much sense but I liked the way it sounded and that trumps sense every time, people. And hey, that's something Ken Russell himself taught me, so this all does make sense, in a sort of way. Sort of.


Anyway I'm happy I'll have the opportunity, whatever I think of the film itself, to see some vintage Oliver Reed in action. Even if he's not doing naked man-on-man wrestling. I can't quite wrap my head around his appeal, but there's some sort of primal beastly manly charisma that just pours off of him and I like it. I like it! Please tell me I'm not alone in this.

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poll by twiigs.com

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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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Ryan Phillippe Three Times

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He's baaack!

Wes Craven tweeted this picture from

the set of Scream 4 last night:


Back in action! Whoo!
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Good Morning, World

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How great is that picture from behind-the-scenes
of Fritz Lang's Metropolis? (via) Go, Robo-Maria, now dance!

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Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

Law Abiding Citizen is a pretty shitty and forgettable movie, but it has got a couple of fun things going for it. For one it's got Gerry Butler's gratuitous backside - gotta love that he strips naked when he sees the police coming; that's what I'm gonna do if the circumstances ever present themselves, too! In fact, why wait for the circumstances to come to me? - and for another, there are a couple of inventive and gruesome kills in it, like the one seen above, wherein the dastardly judge (Annie Corley) gets her blown-out-brains comeuppance via an explosive cell phone.

Yes this moment was teased in the film's trailer, but the trailer actually did something crafty that fooled me - it was edited to seem as if the cell phone doesn't get the chance, or heck isn't even going to, to kill her. There's an extra beat in there that implies Jamie Foxx stops this from happening. I'd seen the trailer a couple of times because...well because it showed a hint of Gerry's nudity and that's how I roll... anyway I was familiar with the way they edited this moment through the trailer and when I was watching the film proper I actually screamed when the film diverged from what I knew and the phone actually blew her head open. I screamed! As much as I love horror movies and see them all the time and scare myself silly, I never scream. So I must give props where props is due.


But if you haven't seen the movie and I've gone and spoiled this for you, don't fret - the film's really not worth your time. Stare at these frames, stare at naked Gerry, and move on. Live your life, for god's sake! It's not worth this torment!

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Previous Ways Not To Die: Daisies Ways #5 - Harpoony Side Up -- Acid Dip -- On a Wing and a Prey -- For Standing in the Way of Sappho -- Busting Rule Number Three (For The Purpose of Number Two) -- Daisies #4 - Window Dressed To Killed -- Hands Off the Haas Orb -- Bullet Ballet -- A Single Vacancy at the Roach Motel -- A School Bus Slipped Thru The Ice -- Trache-AAHHHH!!!-tomy'd - For Mel Gibson's Sins -- A Wide Stanced Slashing --- Daisies Ways #3 - Scratch n' Snuffed -- The Victim of a Viscous Hit & Run -- Curled -- Kabobbed -- Daisies Ways #2 - Aggravated Cementia -- Boo! Nun! -- 2009's Ways Not To Die -- Bug Scratch Fever -- Daisies Ways #1 - Deep Fat Fried in My Own Unique Blend of 500 Herbs & Spices -- By the Yard End of the Stick -- Screwed From A Very Great Distance -- A Righteous Bear-Jew Beatdown -- Fisted By Hugo Sitglitz -- Xeno Morphed -- Fuck-Stuck -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 4 -- Lava Bombed -- The Cradle Will Rock... Your Face Off!!! -- The Food of the Nilbog Goblins -- The Slugs Is Gonna Gitcha -- Phone Shark -- Hide The Carrot -- Sarlacc Snacked -- Avada Kedavra!!! -- Hooked, Lined and Sinkered -- "The Libyans!" -- Axe Me No Questions -- Pin the Chainsaw on the Prostitute -- The Wrath of the Crystal Unicorn -- The Ultimate Extreme Make-Over -- Drown In A Sink Before The Opening Credits Even Roll -- The Dog Who Knew Too Much -- Don't Die Over Spilled Milk -- Inviting the Wrath of Aguirre -- An Inconceivable Outwitting -- The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique -- Nipple Injected Blue Junk -- Your Pick Of The Deadly Six -- Thing Hungry -- Don't Fuck With The Serial Killer's Daughter -- DO Forget To Add The Fabric Softener -- Any Of The Ways Depicted In This Masterpiece Of Lost Cinema -- Rode Down In The Friscalating Dusklight -- Good Morning, Sunshine! -- Mornin' Cuppa Drano -- The Cylon-Engineered Apocalypse -- Tender-Eye-zed -- Martian Atmospheric Asphyxiation -- Maimed By A Mystical Person-Cat -- The Sheets Are Not To Be Trusted -- Handicapable Face-Hacked -- I Did It For You, Faramir -- Summertime In The Park... Of A Pedophile's Mind -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 3 -- Strung Up With Festive Holiday Bulbs By Santa Claus Himself -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 2 -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 1 -- Decapitated Plucked Broiled & Sliced -- Head On A Stick! -- A Trip To The Ol' Wood-Chipper -- Pointed By The T-1000 -- Sucking Face With Freddy Krueger -- A Pen-Full Of Home-Brewed Speed to The Eye -- Motivational Speech, Interrupted -- A Freak Ephemera Storm -- When Ya Gotta Go... Ya Gotta Go -- Hoisted By Your Own Hand Grenade -- Having The Years Suction-Cupped Away -- Criss-Cross -- Turned Into A Person-Cocoon By The Touch Of A Little Girl's Mirror Doppleganger -- Satisfying Society's "Pop Princess" Blood-Lust -- Done In By The Doggie Door -- Tuned Out -- Taking the 107th Step -- Rescuing Gretchen -- Incinerated By Lousy Dialogue -- Starred & Striped Forever -- Vivisection Via Vaginally-Minded Barbed-Wire -- Chompers (Down There) -- Run Down By M. Night Shyamalan -- Everything Up To And Including The Kitchen Toaster -- Sacrificed To Kali -- Via The Gargantuan Venom Of The Black Mamba Snake -- Turned Into An Evil Robot -- The Out-Of-Nowhere Careening Vehicle Splat -- "Oh My God... It's Dip!!!" -- Critter Balled -- Stuff'd -- A Hot-Air Balloon Ride... Straight To Hell!!! -- Puppy Betrayal -- High-Heeled By A Girlfriend Impersonator -- Flip-Top Beheaded -- Because I'm Too Goddamned Beautiful To Live -- By Choosing... Poorly... -- Fried Alive Due To Baby Ingenuity -- A Good Old-Fashioned Tentacle Smothering -- Eepa! Eepa! -- Gremlins Ate My Stairlift -- An Icicle Thru The Eye -- Face Carved Off By Ghost Doctor After Lesbian Tryst With Zombie Women -- Electrocuted By Fallen Power-Lines -- A Mouthful Of Flare -- Taken By The TV Lady -- Bitten By A Zombie -- Eaten By Your Mattress -- Stuffed To Splitting -- Face Stuck In Liquid Nitrogen -- Crushed By Crumbling Church Debris -- Bitten By The Jaws Of Life -- A Machete To The Crotch -- Showering With A Chain-Saw -- In A Room Filled With Razor Wire -- Pod People'd With Your Dog -- Force-Fed Art -- Skinned By A Witch -- Beaten With An Oar -- Curbed -- Cape Malfunction -- In The Corner -- Cooked In A Tanning Bed -- Diced -- Punched Through The Head -- Bugs Sucking On Your Head
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La petite mort at a Funeral

I skipped Death at a Funeral when it came out in 2007 and was all British with Alan Tudyk ass up in there, and it appears I'm going to be forever skipping it now that it's gone and turned African-American and stuffed itself full of Marsden behind. But I thought I'd posted what there was of Jimmy Marsden to be seen from his naked rooftop scene, and it turns out I was wrong. Hence this, a rectification.

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"I appear on the television, you know."

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"They pay me to make use of my melodious voice. I sing rude old Welsh ballads. I recite a few things of my own... and then I give them Elizabethan drama. And all in exchange for one whiskey... served to me in the first aid room. I could, if you like... give you a private performance. I'm told that my voice... is extremely seductive.It seems to unleash whole hurricanes of passion... in the breasts of the females who watch me on the BBC.

Perhaps you should sample the wine... before sending the bottle back to the cellar."

That's the greatest scene of Bunny Lake is Missing, Otto Preminger's 1965 thriller. And yes, that's the playwright Noël Coward being a drunken letch and coming on to Carol Lynley. Proof once again that the internet is a fantastical place, finding that this scene's already been posted online. The film also stars a brutally beautiful 29 year old Keir Dullea, three years before he would ask HAL to close the pod bay doors in 2001.


There are more pictures of Keir's loveliness at this link. But back to Bunny Lake - what a beautiful, boring movie! That sums up the mystery, which was pretty much obvious from the start, as well as Carol Lynley, who is just terrible. But Noël was a hoot in his couple of scenes and the film is really, really gorgeous to gaze upon. Preminger knows how to shoot a movie, I've always found his films beautiful, but I could barely make it through this one.


There's one scene that gooses the proceedings towards the end that's set in a decrepit basement filled with dolls that could've - should've - been really eerie but it's set to this light bouncy airy 60s music that's tremendously distracting and I couldn't really get the point of it. If the dissonance between the sound and the image was the point, it wasn't a good one. It was just frustrating.
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Puff The Gyllen-Dragon

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Oh what's that? New baseless rumors about Jake? Let us dive in! Via here:

"At last the truth comes out. An acquaintance of Reese and Jake acknowledges that they were very smitten with each other for quite awhile and seemed perfectly matched. Unfortunately, Jake had a habit that Reese could not live with, and he wouldn’t give it up. He smoked way too much. And we’re not talking nicotine here. Not only did it rub Reese the wrong way, but she worried about her children being exposed to his bad habits. So, regretfully, she moved on. Note: those of you who insist that Jake is gay are NUTS."

This reminds me back when Jake broke up with kristen Dunst and there were all these rumors about how her hard partying lifestyle was just too much for poor little Jake and how he couldn't take it. (That really just seemed like a way of saying she was a giant coke-head, right?) Well now we "know" that Jake just wanted to lay around eating pork rinds and playing Grand Theft Auto and Responsible Mother Reese Witherspoon couldn't have any more of it after dating him for... what, three years? Way to get your kids out of trouble with haste there Reese. I'm sure he was blowing smoke rings into their cribs every night.

Yadda yadda I don't know these people.
And neither do you. So let's vote!

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poll by twiigs.com

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Hi Penn

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Or, more importantly, hi there Penn's fur. (via) I guess there are reasons to not hate Summer. Anyway this reminds me that Jarett was talking about Penn's fur just yesterday! I knew Penn always shaved himself down for Gossip Girl but I guess I'd never heard him complain about that fact. Those bastard producer people! And this has been your monthly Penn Badgley chest hair post. I hope you enjoyed.
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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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Makin' Love in the Back of Recreational Vehicles

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How odd that my waking thoughts today would be devoted to the 1988 Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin comedy Big Business, right? Off the record (ha), it's a comedy I've seen dozens of times, I was addicted to it when I was a kid and I could quote it from start to finish at you if I was backed into a corner and the only way to save myself was to quote lines from a 1988 Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin comedy, which could obviously happen.

Anyway I've laid bare my love for 80s Bette Midler movies before, once in an epic post devoted to Stella - still one of my favorite posts I've ever done - and several times I've coughed up the truth about my embarrassing devotion to Beaches. But save one brief instance I've never said much about Big Business, which is weird. I need to go revisit all of Bette's big comedies from this period - that sound you hear is my boyfriend packing my belongings and throwing them into the street - for some posts is what I need to do. Outrageous Fortune! Down and Out in Beverly Hills! That one where Danny Devito has her kidnapped! (Oh right Ruthless People is what it's called.) It's been a very long time but I worshipped them all when I was a kid.

All that aside, now that I'm actually doing a post focused on Big Business, I'm not actually even focusing on Bette. This post is devoted to Lily Tomlin's sly double performance in the movie, because it's one I never give enough credit to, and it's her that was weirdly on my mind when I woke up this morning. Bette's broadness - that word goes in several directions, all of them apt - always gobbles up in hindsight the very funny work Tomlin's doing here. So here are five of my favorite Lily moments in the movie.

Wrestling with a wandering shoulder pad in the first meetin'

Also during the first meetin' - muffin, meet tooth

Sadie Ratliff (Bette Midler): That's what the French call a bedet.

Rose Ratliff (Lily Tomlin): Well those French must be taller than me.

Bette gets to do the whole funny mirror routine in the bathroom when the two sets of mismatched twins finally meet each other, but I always loved Tomlin's reaction on the left above where she seems to be trying out for an insanely exaggerated Excedrin commercial. If (When!) I ever meet my long-lost identical twin in a bathroom at the Plaza, this is exactly how I plan on reacting.

And finally, the classic snake-fangs / bracelet-rattle hand shake.
The best part is when she does it while she's sleeping:

[ETA I just posted one of my favorite Bette moments over at The Film Experience. I couldn't help myself.] Alright, so one more thing about Big Business that was integral to my love for it when I was a kid? Fred Ward as the hot hick Roone. His scene sharing a hotel room with the two mincing queens that work with Big City Bette & Lily, Graham (Edward Hermann) and Chuck (Daniel Geroll) - one of the first times I can remember being exposed to gay men in a movie too, for better or worse - left a pretty large imprint on my brain. So cute.

Roone: Hey, I like your kimono! D'ya get that in 'Nam?


Chuck: Uhhh no. Fire Island.

Roone: Don't tell me you two guys
are sleeping in the same bed together?
Graham: Uh... yes.

Roone: Gee I feel awful about that. Now if ya want,
one of you can take the couch and I'll share the bed!

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